Dr. Dale Whittaker is a pragmatic and experienced advisor, speaker and author in higher education.
As a Senior Program Officer in Postsecondary Success at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Dale is focused on making more degrees possible for more people with greater equity. Previously an executive at several of the nation’s largest and fastest-growing public research universities, Dale helps higher education leaders navigate thorny issues including equity and bias, digital transformation, scale and growth, student success, faculty productivity and scholarship, external partnerships, strategic finance, institutional change and transforming teaching and learning.
Having spent time in roles from professor to provost to president, Dale has led and sustained change in large, complex universities over long periods of time. He is pragmatic, insightful, creative and brings the long view.
Dale led the transformation of teaching and learning at Purdue University through a multi-year project called IMPACT (Instruction Matters Purdue Academic Course Transformation). At the University of Central Florida, he launched UCF Online, which grew five-fold in three years; led UCF to become a federally recognized Hispanic-Serving Institution; diversified university leadership; and restructured financial operations and board governance to prevent abuse. He also achieved record student retention and graduation rates at both UCF and Purdue.
In addition to his own experience, Dale maintains a sector-wide view. Over the past year, Dale has interviewed more than 50 college presidents across a wide range of institutions including community colleges, HBCUs, small private colleges, for-profit universities and public research universities. He stays on top of higher education patterns and trends and brings that information to his writing and speaking.
Dale has advised universities, management consulting organizations including Grant Thornton’s Higher Education Practice, start-up educational innovators such as Knack, and large-scale philanthropic foundations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Although educated as an engineer with degrees from Texas A&M University and Purdue University, he also is a watercolor artist and musician. He has studied with Eric Wiegardt, AWS-DF, NWS; Kim English; and Chien Chung Wei, AWS, NWS, and shown his work at the La Pointe Center for the Arts in Wisconsin and Artist’s Own Gallery in Indiana. He loves playing harmonica with blues, folk and country bands.
Dale and his partner, Mary, live on an island in Lake Superior, where there is great hiking, adequate bandwidth and plenty of fresh air.
